Prasanta Bishoyi (AGM, NF Times) : The incident of communal violence on the occasion of odia New year and Hanuman Jayanti at Sambalpur has had the larger degree of impact across the state particularly in western and southern part of Odisha. Demanding an impartial enquiry into the attacks on the procession on April 12, the 12 hours strike call of Viswa Hindu Parisad and Bajrangdal as declared earlier came to an end at 3 pm. The strike is reported to have gone completely peaceful without any report of untoward incident. The strike call confined to ten districts was visible from the reports of different administrative authorities.
The strike call of nine hours at koraput district went off peacefully. While informing to our correspondents, the SDPO of Jeypore Mr. Harish told that there was no violence in and around Jeypore. We had deployed police personal adequately in different areas of Jeypore so as to have strict observation and monitoring. The members of VHP Tejeswar Panda, Bajrangi Babubhai, Bunu Rath and Lalit Agrawal who took the lead here at Jeypore during the strike told us that ninety five percentage of shops remained closed. This unprecedented support shown by most of the shop owners towards the strike call of VHP and Bajrangdal vividly indicate that people are not satisfied with the action of Govt of Odisha. It needs to be extra sensitive to the occurance of violence at sambalpur that killed a precious life along with damage of huge private properties as felt by many.
The Strike Call of VHP and Bajrangdal largely Successful
